Often the most popular posts on the site, the galleries not only take our readers around the world, but back in time as well. Some galleries even show us the farthest reaching points of the Cosmos and the thriving microscopic world invisible to the human eye.

It’s almost impossible to grasp the scale of the tsunami that slammed into Japan yesterday following the 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast near Sendai. The quake was a global-scale event, shifting the axis of the entire earth by four inches.

These satellite photos may help you grasp just how much water moved from the ocean onto land. Comparing the image from after the quake above with an image shot February 26 below, you can see how the coastline got erased by the displaced water.

If you click on the photos, you can see the very high-resolution photos that NASA’s Terra Satellite captured.

 

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Bad Astronomy:

Every year, thousands of incredible images of the sky are taken from observatories on the ground and in space, from spacecraft, and from amateur astronomers. And it seems that the people who make these images are getting better with time, creating nothing short of art.

Amazing photo. MSNBC.com’s Cosmic Log:

This image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a fast-growing sunspot 1112, crackling with solar flares.

Alan Boyle says:You don’t want to see the sun when it’s angry. Or do you? Over the past few days the Internet has been buzzing about a monster mega-filament of magnetized material, stretching more than 300,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) across the sun’s solar hemisphere. In this color-coded, extreme ultraviolet image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, you can see the filament arcing around sunspot 1112 at lower right. To give you a sense of scale, that width is longer than the distance between Earth and the moon. If the filament unleashed a flare in just the wrong direction, it could have caused trouble for electric grids and communication links on Earth.

Fortunately, when the eruption finally came on Monday, it sent a solar flare off into deep space and away from Earth. You can watch the blast on the SpaceWeather.com website. This won’t be the last outburst: Astronomers expect solar activity to continue rising toward“Solar Max” in 2012 or 2013.

At NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in ’65. He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

Wow.

(via kottke)

President Obama is calling on NASA to cancel the program that was to return humans to the Moon by 2020, and focus instead on radically new space technologies.

Mr. Obama’s 2010 budget proposal for NASA asks for $18 billion over five years for fueling spacecraft in orbit, new types of engines to accelerate spacecraft through space and robotic factories that could churn soil on the Moon — and eventually Mars — into rocket fuel.

Andy Pasztor for the Wall Street Journal tonight:

The White House has decided to begin funding private companies to carry NASA astronauts into space, but the proposal faces major political and budget hurdles, according to people familiar with the matter.

The controversial proposal, expected to be included in the Obama administration’s next budget, would open a new chapter in the U.S. space program. The goal is to set up a multiyear, multibillion-dollar initiative allowing private firms, including some start-ups, to compete to build and operate spacecraft capable of ferrying U.S. astronauts into orbit—and eventually deeper into the solar system.

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(via kottke)

• Remembering Apollo 11 at The Big Picture
• John Noble Wilford, who covered the Apollo 11 mission for The New York Times, narrates a look back at the historic journey.
• One Hand for Space History, as Superpowers Spar. The New York Times
• Maps of the Apollo 11 moon walks superimposed on a soccer pitch and a baseball diamond. (Re-link from January)
• Extreme profanity at it’s best: The Onion reports on the Moon landing.
• Apollo 11 40th anniversary at NASA.gov

The Boston Herald reported on the new site today:

Families crowded around black-and-white television sets in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong take man’s first steps on the moon.

Now, they’ll be able to watch the Apollo 11 mission recreated in real time on the Web, follow Twitter feeds of transmissions between Mission Control and the spacecraft, and even get an e-mail alert when the lunar module touches down. Those features are part of a new Web site from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum commemorating the moon mission and Kennedy’s push to land Americans there first.

“Putting a man on the moon really did unite the globe,” said Thomas Putnam, director of the JFK Library. “We hope to use the Internet to do the same thing.”

The Web site — WeChooseTheMoon.org — goes live at 8:02 a.m. Thursday, 90 minutes before the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla. It will track the capsule’s route from the Earth to the Moon, ending with the moon landing and Armstrong’s walk — in real time, but 40 years later. Internet visitors can see animated recreations of key events from the four-day mission, including when Apollo 11 first orbits the moon and when the lunar module separates from the command module, as well as browse video clips and photos and hear the radio transmission between the astronauts and NASA flight controllers.

Mark C. Lee in 1992 in the first untethered spacewalk in a decade. NASA.

The Lens blog, just a few weeks before the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11:

“You can’t bring back anything tangible besides those photographs as a record of where you’ve been and what you’ve done,” he said. (Souvenirs like moon rocks are strictly against protocol.) “We’re given this god’s-eye view, so we need to learn how to capture it and bring it back home.”

What started modestly has become part of every mission. Though digital cameras have replaced film cameras, many early photographs taken by astronauts have become iconic — such as an Apollo image of the earth seen behind the moon’s horizon in 1968 and Buzz Aldrin’s photo of his landmark footprint on the surface of the moon. Mike Gentry, a photo researcher and librarian at the Johnson Space Center in Houston since 1969, said that a photograph of the framed iris of Earth from 1972, known as the “blue marble,” is quite possibly the most reproduced image ever taken.

NASA has lots more in its archive.

On Monday, May 11, after months of delays and preparation, NASA’s Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final servicing mission to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The seven crew members left Florida for low Earth orbit at 2:01 pm, for a scheduled 11-day mission, including 5 days of Extra-vehicular activity (EVAs) to work on the Hubble. 31 photos total.

Weather permitting, a night launch of the space shuttle is typically visible from much of the East Coast. The most dramatic view is from inside the yellow circle. But within the red circle, skywatchers may see very bright, pulsating, fast-moving object that resembles the brightest stars in the sky from 3 to 8 minutes after launch. For viewers near the edges of the circles, however, the shuttle will hug the horizon, so an unobstructed view is needed.

(via)

For decades, space experts have warned of orbits around the planet growing so crowded that two satellites might one day slam into one another, producing swarms of treacherous debris.It happened Tuesday. And the whirling fragments could pose a threat to the International Space Station, orbiting 215 miles up with three astronauts on board, though officials said the risk was now small.

“This is a first, unfortunately,” Nicholas L. Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said of the collision. 

One of these was an Iridium communications satellite (part of their constellation of sixty-six).

Maps of the Apollo 11 moon walks superimposed on a soccer pitch and a baseball diamond. They sure didn’t walk very far.

(via Kottke)

The worst parts are the one hundred-plus pages dedicated to the crew protection recovery where the report outlines, in one example, NASA recovered fifty three pieces of boots. Only fourteen boots — two per astronaut — flew on STS-107.

NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour recently returned to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after its successful mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle, being a reusable spacecraft, has a cycle of preparation, execution and recovery – Endeavour has been through this cycle 22 times now, since 1992. Here is a look at one full cycle for one space shuttle, starting with the landing of Endeavour from its previous mission (STS-123) on March 26th, and ending with its return to Florida 9 months (and 6.6 million miles) later, after mission STS-126. (31 photos total)

Starting Thanksgiving evening, Jupiter and Venus will begin moving closer so that by Sunday and Monday, they will appear 2 degrees apart, which is about a finger width held out at arm’s length, said Alan MacRobert, senior editor at Sky and Telescope magazine. Then on Monday night, they will be joined by a crescent moon right next to them, he said.

Look in the southwestern sky around twilight — no telescope or binoculars needed. The show will even be visible in cities if it’s a clear night.

The three celestial objects come together from time to time, but often they are too close to the sun or unite at a time when they aren’t so visible. The next time the three will be as close and visible as this week will be Nov. 18, 2052, according to Jack Horkheimer, director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium.

(via Discovery.com)

“We intend to send astronauts to the moon and ultimately to build a lunar outpost,” said Zhang Qingwei, who was until recently a leader of China’s manned space program.

Zhang now heads a new corporation that aims to become the Chinese equivalent of Boeing or Airbus.

We have to get there first.

NASA is tip-toeing once again into what was once called the N-word — nuclear — with a technology development program aimed at powering its planned base on the moon. 

Great news! Hopefully you can detect my sarcasm. We’ve trashed the hell out of Earth, let’s ruin the moon, too!

NASA said Monday it is delaying its mission to the Hubble Space Telescope until next year because of a serious breakdown of the observatory in orbit.

Space shuttle Atlantis had been scheduled to blast off in just two weeks, but a new and unexpected problem with the Hubble appeared on Saturday night when the telescope stopped sending science data.

That potentially means a new repair issue for the astronauts to confront — one that they haven’t trained for and never anticipated. 

Next month’s shuttle flight to the Hubble Space Telescope faces an increased risk of getting hit by space junk because it will be in a higher, more littered orbit than usual, NASA said Monday.

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New number-crunching puts the odds of a catastrophic strike by orbital debris including bits of space junk at about 1-in-185 during Atlantis’ upcoming mission to Hubble. That compares to 1-in-300 odds for a shuttle flight to the International Space Station, shuttle program director John Shannon said Monday.

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Orbital debris is the newest, biggest threat to an orbiting space shuttle, surpassing even the liftoff dangers of the main engines and booster rockets, and the always-dangerous re-entry, Shannon said.

Hurricane Ike just rolled across Cuba, and soaked parts of Haiti – both regions still reeling from recent Hurricane Gustav. Ike appears to be weakening now, but is headed tward the Gulf Coast of the U.S., and may yet strengthen. The crew aboard the International Space Station was able to take a photo of Ike from 220 miles overhead last Thursday – one in a long series of great NASA photographs of hurricanes from space. Here are some of the best, from the past several years.

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch next month (October 8th), carrying new instruments, batteries and gyroscopes to the Hubble Space Telescope. This will be the final servicing mission to Hubble, the 30th flight of the 23-year old Atlantis, and one of the final 10 flights of the Space Shuttle program, which will be retired in 2010. Even though Shuttle launches may seem to have become commonplace, their preparation and execution is still a months-long process, requiring the work and diligence of thousands to make sure the aging, complex systems are all in perfect condition for launch. Here are some photos of the ongoing preparations for the launch of this mission, STS-125, some of the people involved in making it work, and the crew, who will assume the risks to help keep Hubble alive.

This is a side of NASA many don’t get to see, but should look closely at. The time and effort spent on getting a shuttle ready to launch is remarkable.

NASA tested the parachutes for the recovery system on its Orion crew exploration vehicle above the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona on July 31. The test proved unsuccessful when a test set-up parachute failed.

The failed parachute — called a programmer chute — deployed, but it did not inflate properly and failed to get the test article that simulated the Orion crew module into the correct orientation, altitude and speed for the test, causing the parachute system for the test vehicle to fail.

Britain looks very different from the skies. From a bird’s eye view of the nation, its workings, cities, landscapes and peoples are revealed and re-discovered in new and extraordinary ways.

Cutting edge technology allows you to see through cloud cover, navigate the landscape and witness familiar sights as never seen before.